Speculative Fiction—an all-encompassing genre created to describe stories of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and other stories that have an element of “What if...” in them. A story in speculative fiction is one that adds an element of the unreal, or asks, what would become of our society if history took a different direction at some important event? Fiction with a little something extra thrown in.—William D. Richards

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The Mercy of the Tide by Keith Rosson

Release date: February 21, 2017

Subgenre: Alternate history, magical realism

About The Mercy of the Tide:

Riptide, Oregon, 1983. A sleepy coastal town, where crime usually
consists of underage drinking down at a Wolf Point bonfire. But then
strange things start happening―a human skeleton is unearthed in a local
park and mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the
town's beaches. The Mercy of the Tide follows four people
drawn irrevocably together by a recent tragedy as they do their best to
reclaim their lives―leading them all to a discovery that will change
them and their town forever. At the heart of the story are Sam Finster, a
senior in high school mourning the death of his mother, and his sister
Trina, a nine-year-old deaf girl who denies her grief by dreaming of a
nuclear apocalypse as Cold War tensions rise. Meanwhile, Sheriff Dave
Dobbs and Deputy Nick Hayslip must try to put their own sorrows aside to
figure out who, or what, is wreaking havoc on their once-idyllic town.

Keith Rosson paints outside the typical genre lines with his brilliant
debut novel. It is a gorgeously written book that merges the sly wonder
of magical realism and alternate history with the depth and
characterization of literary fiction.

Excerpt:

Trina learned to fear the bomb two weeks after her mother died, and
she fell into that fear like someone slipping into bed after a hard
day’s work. Fell into it with a relief that bordered on gratitude.
When she thought of the bomb, she felt like someone who was gravely
ill witnessing a terrible and violent event: a merciless
distraction, but at least one outside of her own body.

When thoughts of her mother came now, thoughts that made her ache
and curl up in bed like a plant without sunlight, she readThe Looming Error. She read aboutMutual Assured Destruction—M.A.D.—and at night those three letters ran the plainsong of their
zippered teeth along her heart as she stared at the ceiling wishing
for sleep. It was a lullaby that made her heart fearful and clumsy,
those three letters, thatidea, but—and this was the important part—it took up too much room to
worry about anything else. To feel sad for herself. To miss her
mom. The world, Trina knew, was doomed, and it was terrible, but
there was some part of her that felt glad that at least this part
of it would be over. The world wouldn’t survive, and there was
something freeing about that, like finally throwing up after you’ve
felt sick for a long, long time.
Those three letters, M.A.D., and how they spelled the end of
everything. The book lay under her bed and sometimes it felt like
she slept above a bomb for all the power it had.
The thing she hated most about the Soviets and the United States
both was their babyishness. How much they seemed like grumpy,
spoiled kids playing with toys they didn’t want to give up. There
was a lot about the negotiations in the book, and she could picture
it all too well, the two countries discussing things in a big room
somewhere, everyone with their own glass of water by their hands,
old white men in suits trying to work out trades in practically the
same way that she and Sam had bartered the gross parts of their
school lunches when she was a baby back in first grade:United States: We want you to reduce the number of your SS-20
missile launchers in Europe, okay? You have 243 of them and we
want you to only have 75.

Russia: Hmm. Okay. If you also only have 75 launchers for your
Tomahawk cruise missiles there as well.

United States: Fine by us.

Russia: Ha! Except we both know that your Tomahawks carry four
warheads compared to the one warhead of the SS-20, so you
would have like 300 warheads to our 75! Cheater!

Trina knew they did not actually talk like this, but still.
Practically.

About Keith Rosson:

Keith Rosson is the author of the novels THE MERCY OF THE TIDE
(2017, Meerkat) and SMOKE CITY (2018, Meerkat). His short fiction
has appeared in Cream City Review, PANK, Redivider, December, and
more. An advocate of both public libraries and non-ironic adulation of
the cassette tape, he can be found at keithrosson.com.

About Meerkat Press:

Meerkat Press is an independent publisher committed to finding and
publishing exceptional, irresistible, unforgettable fiction. And despite
the previous sentence, we frown on overuse of adjectives and adverbs in
submissions. *smile*

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